By David Crystal

New from Cambridge University Press!

By Peter Mark Roget

This book "supplies a vocabulary of English words and idiomatic phrases 'arranged … according to the ideas which they express'. The thesaurus, continually expanded and updated, has always remained in print, but this reissued first edition shows the impressive breadth of Roget's own knowledge and interests."

[For a review of the authors' previous book "The Sounds of English:Phonetics and Phonology for English Teachers in Southeast Asia", seehttp://linguistlist.org/issues/10/10-1348.html --Eds.]

OVERVIEW

Knowledge of grammar is a prerequisite for language teachers. Theprevalence of 'Englishes' in different societies across the worldcomplicates the case of English language teaching. The 'Englishes' couldbe the 'standard Englishes' (such as British English, American English, orAustralian English) or the 'new English' which have originated in theoriental region, as in Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines.This book for practising teachers and student teachers of English inSoutheast Asia tries to provide a comprehensive overview of StandardEnglish grammar. It uses references from the local varieties of English tofamiliarise the teachers with the features within English.The authors have categorised the content of the book into five coresubject areas: Traditional model of the morphology and syntax of standardEnglish (Chapters 2-9); Functional Grammar of English (Chapters 10-16);Ideas of Noam Chomsky (Chapters 17-19); Grammars of other languages(Chapters 20-23); Computers in the analysis and teaching of grammar(Chapter 24).The first sixteen chapters of the book are considered a "must-read" by theauthors. For those readers who are not familiar with the works ofChomsky, chapters 17-19 are also essential, as they provide a glimpse intoChomsky's model of grammar. Most chapters are followed by supplementarysections, which include Practice Activities, Discussion Questions andFurther Reading.

SUMMARY

Chapters 1- 9, focus on Traditional model of the morphology and syntax ofstandard English.Chapter One, purports to acquaint the reader with the descriptive approachfollowed throughout the book, while educating about the structure ofStandard English. The second chapter on Morphology concerns itself withthe way words are broken into morphemes. The chapter also explains howsome of the most common processes are used to introduce new words in alanguage. The eight processes described include 'Coinage' 'Borrowing','Derivation' and 'Acronym'.The basics of grammar involves identifying and naming parts of a sentenceand the assigning each word to a particular Word Class (Lexical Categoryor Parts of Speech).The third chapter of the book focuses on 'WordClasses', it introduces the terms, Content and Functional Words. Theauthors categorise content words as Nouns, Verbs, Adverbs, and Adjectiveswhile functional words as Articles, Prepositions, Conjunctions, Pronouns,etc. Verbs are the central members of the word-class. The fourth chapteron 'Verbs' concentrates on the concepts of 'Head verbs and Auxiliaries','Tenses', and ' classification of the form of Verb Phrases'. The chapterexplains the concepts through simple examples and concludes with a usefultabulated summary of Verb Phrases: a classification of their forms.Theother content words are discussed in the fifth chapter on ' Nouns,Adjectives, and Adverbs'. The Practice Activity at the end of the chapteris particularly useful.'Phrases', the sixth chapter begins with a simple definition of'Constituent': Using a very small number of examples, the chapterdescribes the notions of Noun Phrase, Adjective Phrase, PrepositionalPhrase and Verb Phrase. This chapter is too short to cover such a largearea. But, the chapter manages to clarify the concept of why English is a'Head-First-Language'. The seventh chapter on 'Objects and Complements'discusses the role of phrases within a sentence. The chapter could dowith more examples to illustrate the concepts of of 'Direct and IndirectObjects', 'Pre- and Post-Modifiers' and 'Determiners'. However, itincludes a very useful table summarizing the various grammaticalfunctions, and a diagnostic test for identifying them.The eighth chapter considers 'Finite clauses', which are clauses with afinite verb. The ninth chapter on 'Non finite clauses' admits thatidentification and classification of non finite clauses is rather moredifficult than the finite clause. Here, the nonfinite clauses areclassified according to the type of the non finite verb they contain andalso by whether or not they have an overt subject. The chapter looks intooccurrence of non finite clauses along with its function with a subject.

Knowledge of the vocabulary and concepts is necessary to analyse wellformed English sentences, but many linguists feel that this knowledge is,in itself incomplete. A need to understand why some well-formed sentencesmay not be appropriate in some contexts and why some fragments may bequite acceptable, led to the analysis of the sentences in terms of theirdiscourse. The tenth chapter 'Functional Grammar: How Language Works inContext' introduces Halliday's model of grammar, and briefly considers theclause as representing simultaneously three different types of meanings.They are referred to as Experiential, Interpersonal and Textual. Chapterseleven to fifteen examine these notions in more detail.

'Transformational Grammar' is the sixteenth chapter of the book, whichbriefly introduces Chomsky's original concept of generative-transformational grammar, and examines the notions of phrase structurerules, the lexicon and transformations. The strength of this chapter liesin the discussion where the authors have made an attempt to describe thereasons for the abandoning of this neat theory. They highlight the threeissues for this :missing generalizations; complications from extending therule; and transformations changing the meaning of the phrase. Theseventeenth chapter 'Minimalist Grammar' is one of the central ideas ofChomsky. 'Minimalist grammar' assumes that there are 'Principles', whichare structural constraints that are fixed in all human languages, and'Parameters', which provide for variation among languages. The chapterconsiders the Structure dependent principle and the null subject, wh- andhead parameters. As it is an introductory book for teachers the authorshave used few examples to explain the Tree diagrams, often associated withChomsky's grammar. Minimalist Grammar provides a framework to explain thestructure of all human languages. It assumes that this structure is'hardwired in the brain' and all humans are born with it. This is theinnateness hypothesis,which is the eighteenth chapter. The innatenesshypothesis has fundamental implications for teachers because it impliesthat language acquisition is a natural process and can be nurtured byproviding a conducive environment. This chapter summarizes the evidence tosupport the innateness hypothesis under six headings: Speed, Criticalperiod, Poverty of data, Convergence,Universality and Species specificity.

Chapters twenty to twenty three devote themselves to a brief grammaranalysis of Singapore English, Mandarin Chinese (MC) and Tagalog.Focusing on Noun Phrases, Verb Phrases and Word Order within a clausethese chapters compare each language with English.

'Grammatical Change: Internal vs. External Forces' is the second lastchapter of the book. Many scholars who write about language changedistinguish between changes in language that are due to natural orinternal tendencies and those which occur because of external influencesuch as contact with other languages. This chapter briefly considers theinternal and external forces which lead to grammatical change. Itconcludes with a discussion on the role of the teachers dealing with thesechanges. It provides some practical solutions, which the teachers can makeuse of in their classroom discourse. Computers have entered almost allwalks of human life. The last chapter 'Grammar and Computers' considersthree issues: (1)software that can be used to teach grammar, (2) softwarethat can be used to analyze grammar and (3) tools such as grammar andspell checkers which come with standard software packages.

EVALUATION

The book is written very simply, and does a good job in introducing themain features of English grammar.

The Traditional Model of the Morphology and Syntax of Standard Englishdealt in Chapters 2-9 does justice to the topics covered. The chapter onverbs is one of the most exhaustively dealt chapter of the book. What Ireally liked about these chapters was the section on 'Further issues andproblematic matters' which coaxed me (and I hope shall coax the readers ofthis book ) to analyse English in a more critical way. Each of thesesections featured on various unresolved issues pertaining to thegrammatical structure of English. At some places, like in the chapter onMorphology and Word Classes, the authors leave the discussion withteasers, while in the chapter on Verbs, the authors take a stance toexplain some theoretically conflicting definitions. Most of the practiceexercises at the end of these chapters are good. In case reader hasproblems solving them, these are diagnostic questions have solutions atthe end of the book. The solutions themselves provide a learning window,and are self-explanatory.

Functional Grammar of English dealt in Chapters 10-16 is really tough tounderstand. I thought I would have to rely on Haliday's book to refreshmany briefly dealt concepts in these chapters as the authors don't gointo great details to cover major aspects of Functional Grammar theory.But on reading the chapters and paying careful attention to the examples Iwas able to refresh myself. I would suggest any novice reader to look intoHalliday's work before taking on these chapters. A reader,familair withHalliday's work would find these chapters a good source for deskreferences, especially the table on Page 140 dealing with the summary ofgrammatical processes and their functions.

Ideas of Noam Chomsky dealt in the three chapters 17-19 is to the point.It purports to acquaint the reader with Chomsky's idea rather than goinginto details of discussing his grammar theory in detail. If the reader isthorough with the first section of the book, understanding Chomsky'sgrammar is not difficult, as these chapters assume certain proficiencywith the traditional morphology and syntax of English.

The last few chapters dealing with the Grammars of other languages(Chapters 20-23) and Computers in the analysis and teaching of grammar(Chapter 24), are very brief. The authors have made it categorical thatdealing with these concepts would require entire books, but I think theyhave managed to pick out very characteristic distinguishing features tocompare the grammars of other languages and English.In the last chapter, I feel they could have talked more about the varioussoftwares currently available to users of English and English linguists.

I have reservations of this book being used by teachers who are not veryconfident about their basic grammar knowledge, but suggest it for those,who are fairly well acquainted with the traditional morphology and syntaxof English. This book, as I have already mentioned, serves as a good deskreference and the index does justice to all the topics covered in thechapter.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER:
About the reviewer: Pranita Gopal is Research Associate for a project titled "Multilingualism , Subalternity and Hegemony of English in India and South Africa" at the Centre for Educational Studies, Indian Institute of Education, Pune. Presently she is at the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, Mumbai. Her work area encompasses the field of Language Acquistition and Language Development in children in a Multilingual society, like India. This work extends to her Doctoral thesis, where she studies the cognitive aspects of multilingualism and aims to design strategies for enhancing language development in multilingual schools, in India.